The Brand Experience
Do brands produce sensory experiences? Of course they do. In some minds more than others and from some brands more than others.
Do brands produce sensory experiences? Of course they do. In some minds more than others and from some brands more than others.
In my case, Airbnb generates an adventurous spirit. I patronize Airbnb when I’ve spent long hours on a plane and need a long night’s sleep. So the simple combination of a bedroom with a lock and a brand new city is enough to satisfy my brand perception of a vacation rental site.
Now about the long hours I mentioned above -- the entire airline industry gets pretty beat up in consumers’ perceptions. The nature of the service means there are a lot of angry, tired and anxious patrons. But two airlines stand out from the rest, eliciting cultural discovery over anxiety, inspired getaways over leg cramps, and elite comfort over tension.
Alaska Airlines dumped a lot of capital into brand perception. The in-flight experience is no better than any other airline, but the consistency of the visual language of rugged exploration makes me feel like Lewis or Clark, exploring an untamed terminal.
All this to say, brand experience is a sensory one. Let’s take a look at the senses.
The Tactile Sense
The sensory experience of touch gives the term touchpoint a whole new meaning!
Case in point: Sappi — a leading provider of paper — put together an article called Neuroscience of Touch. Now Sappi is in the business of selling a product (paper), which is heavily reliant on touch. The importance of this sense in the overall brand perception is apparent when you consider tactile qualities of our physical world.
Touch is a powerful form of non-verbal communication. It requires no explanation or introduction. Imagine the luxurious feel of a business card for an interior design business. It clearly adds sophistication to its brand perception. Or the tactile quality of a product in the tech sector. A non-verbal touchpoint is arguably just as important.
As stated by Dr. David Eagleman,
In humans touch represents a powerful form of non-verbal communication. Our sense of touch plays a fundamental role in daily life, from learning about objects to communicating with other people.
The Visual Sense
John Howkins, author of The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas, explains that the creative economy includes:
…aesthetics, branding, business models, networks, culture, education & learning, intellectual property, management, digital/online, policy, pricing, public statistics, software, startups, tax, urban design and work.
Most of these terms originate in a visual medium. So visual is a supremely important part of the brand experience.
This is the most obvious sense in the brand experience. It's usually the first impression of customer perception.
An example of a visual touchpoint is a full logo or alternate mark for social media, visual language like illustrations, icons and photography associated with the brand, fonts, colors and aesthetic of marketing materials, and any other item you see with your vision. The most important takeaway is to make sure each visual element is quickly identified as belonging to your brand.
The Mental Sense
Emotions are harder to quantify but they are just as important to your brand. Brand authority is increasingly important as Google puts more emphasis on thought leadership. How a consumer perceives your brand is the ultimate gauge.
So make sure your customers connect with you at a deeper level.
Four Things We Can Learn From Five Guys About Authenticity
In the summer of 2009 during President Obama’s first year, NBC filmed a behind-the-scenes special called “Inside The White House”.
Marketing For Loyalty
President Obama at Five Guys
In the summer of 2009 during President Obama’s first year, NBC filmed a behind-the-scenes special called “Inside The White House.
Despite its title, these spots usually breed seriously fake smiles and new focus-group-approved ‘habits’. Not the case though when the President and the crew stepped out to have lunch at a Washington area Five Guys. A well-known burger fan, Obama publicly put the presidential seal of approval on their juicy burgers and salty fries. The presidency and the chain both got an approval boost for their grounded, Americana bona fidas. Authentic or not, authenticity won out.
Five Guys doesn’t tout, it just presents itself as the best of its kind. And that’s pretty authentic and worthy of a cult-like following.
1. Utilize Word-of-mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth is the name of the game. Just as the brand didn’t hype Obama’s visit, they let their loyal following do the work. Five Guys learned early that they couldn’t compete with other chains’ ad budget, so they decided on a customer sourcing strategy. With basically no budget for national advertising, Five Guys relies on social media hashtag research and quick response for negative feedback to build their brand. The buzz surrounding their burgers is really coming from their patrons. When you know this about Five Guys, they’re positioned as the market underdog and it produces a mass following. Brilliant.
2. Invest in Employees
To incentives employees to uphold their friendly servicemantra, Five Guys invested in third-party mystery shoppers. These shoppers evaluate service and offer major bonuses to employees. This nurturing produces loyalty.
3. Be True To Your Brand In The Small and Big Things
According to PR Manager Molly Catalano, even the interior has been well-thought out. Shops are designed to be all about the food. No frills, no excess decorations, just an open kitchen, stacks of potatoes boxes of peanut oil and even peanuts themselves. Don’t be bullied into doing something off-brandeither. In their infancy, a Pentagon Admiral phoned Five Guys for a delivery. Their no-frills policy calls for no deliveries, not even for the powerful. To beat the point home, Five Guys printed a 22-foot-long banner that shouted “Absolutely No Delivery”. Be proud of your focus on quality.
4. Don’t Give In To Trends if They Won’t Help the Brand
When sourcing ingredients, Five Guys look for freshness, lack of preservatives, and Five Guy standards which demand no freezers just coolers. The vast majority of their fries are cooked from the best northern soils of Idaho, and they are quick to tell you in wall postings where the recent potato crop has come from. With a near-obsessive focus on quality, Five Guys unintentionally offers no certified organic or antibiotic-free items. According to Molly, organic doesn’t mean quality in every case. Rather a fresh quality is what they’re after. The franchise isn’t claiming health benefits from their offerings, just fresh and enjoyable meals. In an age of meaningless buzz words, authenticity is surely appreciated by the public.
Accolades
And, the public has rewarded the chain. From the latest Harris Poll EquiTrend survey’s “Burger Brand of the Year”, Five Guys beat out In-N-Out for the second time in a row.
Tasting table describes the experience.
The restaurant’s signature brown paper bag — made soggy by seeping peanut oil — has become an image of good ol’ American fast food, helping the chain defend its title for the second year in a row.
Often it’s the real folks from the real world that win our hearts.
Best Buy's Bold Move
Best Buy is in the news for a recent rebrand. It seems subtle, but the redesign was done with good reasoning.
Best Buy’s rebrand seems subtle, but the redesign was done with good reasoning.
Previous to the new mark, the primary focus seemed to be the yellow price tag. Tracking of the type was generous but the overall wordmark was somewhat cramped within the boundaries. The color scheme consisted of black and yellow — no blue was in sight.
New Design
This redesign is part of a new marketing strategy from Best Buy to update colors and highlight the culture and expertise of their Blue Shirt employees.
Tracking is reduced and there is less emphasis on the tag. The price is no longer the totality of the story but rather the Blue Shirts’ expertise and talent. A blue and yellow color scheme stands out in a digital and print format.
Although an expensive and time-consuming process, rebranding is a great way to modernize and refresh your brand.
8 Questions That Will Anchor Your Brand
Have you ever run across an organization that just confuses you? Industry identification is totally unclear by the logo and its visual presence unsettles your eyes.
Read This Before You Start The Logo Design Process
Misalignment is your brand’s biggest enemy.
Have you ever run across an organization that just confuses you? Industry identification is totally unclear by the logo and its visual presence unsettles your eyes. Touchpoints (any point of contact between a buyer and a seller) are styled independent of any solid structure. A shaky approach to design compromises the integrity of your brand and confuses the marketplace. When planning and thought isn’t involved in the design strategy, the brand suffers.
Perhaps you’re not a designer. Or you’re unsure how to start.
Put in the time at the front end and you’ll brand will surely be anchored and ready to launch.
Discovery
A worthy design partner will ask a bunch of questions. This is called the Discovery Process.
Imagine having a million dollar idea. This is an idea you’re passionate about. You miss meals researching it. If it’s truly a good one, you must welcome a myriad of questions coming from your identity design partner.
Now there’s no reason to drop a vague job posting in a contest-driven design site that appeals to the lowest-skilled designer. It might cost you $100 and take a week, but these pixel-pushers are the kind that have one style, a backlog of cookie cutter logos and templates, and probably not much drive for thoughtfulness. They value quantity over quality. We’re all striving to be better than this.
By contrast, seek out a professional brand identity specialist that will
deep-dive into your brand’s goals, target market, look and feel, strategic offering, uniqueness, understanding of the market.
The Five Guys Model
Sidebar: I went to Five Guys today. It was a tasty lunch, but a better experience. Among the many attributes of the brand, I noticed really interesting touches like large bags of potatoes, a board that noted where today’s french fries came from (Mr. Hanks: Parker, Idaho), and wall quotes praising their burgers.
Why did I tell you about my lunch? To demonstrate the importance of alignment questions, I’m answering the following questions acting as Five Guys’ Brand Strategist. This is an exercise any company must go through before rebranding or starting out in the marketplace. Have these on-hand when you start your discovery process:
And Now, The Homework
Product
What is your offering?
Burgers, fries, a quick and tasty meal with friendly service and no compromise on quality
Why is it important to the world?
Five Guys offers food in a speedy and quality fashion. In a fast-food world, the market was missing a rapid quality option until Five Guys.
What is your solution and what problem is it addressing?
The pain-point of fast food offerings skimping on taste. Five Guys is committed to taste.
Uniqueness
What sets you apart?
Five Guys grill their burgers cooked to perfection and fries in pure peanut oil. Five Guys sources ingredients that align with the quality of the brand.
Target
Who is your ideal customer?
A person on the run that needs a tasty burger and fries but doesn’t want to skimp on quality
Message
What’s your primary message?
Handcrafted burgers and fries: the best in any location
What’s your brand’s top keywords?
burgers, fries, handcrafted, tasty, ready-to-order, diner, friendly, energetic, quality, service
What are your brand’s abstract keywords? (Look and feel words. Words that aren’t necessarily found on your site but apply to your brand)
original, simplicity, casual, high-quality
I’m not privy to the design strategy of Five Guys, but with the above information, let’s now critique the logo’s alignment of the brand.
Camera-Ready?
Does a passionate red thick sans serif capped type paired with some variation of Tekton mixed-case embody brand message? Does it align well with the goals of the organization and how they want to be perceived?
These questions measure the effectiveness of a lasting mark on a brand.
Good job! You’re more aligned with your brand than ever!
If you didn’t before, I imagine you now see why it’s necessary to obtain context and information to begin logo design and development of the brand as a whole.
How Much is My Brand Worth?
What is a brand? It’s an all-inclusive word that means everything associated with you. Every touchpoint means every visual aspect:
What is a brand? It’s an all-inclusive word that means everything associated with you. Every touchpoint means every visual aspect:
logo, uniforms, color scheme, take-out bags, utensils, coffee cups, storefront, food truck, vehicle wrap, social accounts, stationery, stock photography, advertisements, business cards, etc
and emotional aspect:
feelings of your customer at the sight of your logo
(ie: mouth-watering, customer care, environmentally-friendly, jovial, charitable, luxury, quality, etc)
All of these aspects are things you’re putting out into the world. The starting point to your brand, I would argue, is your logo. So to begin the construction of your brand or rebrand, let’s understand design.
“Make something like the Nike Swoosh. ”
The Swoosh
Why is the swoosh so synonymous with good design? Business owners understand that the swoosh clearly displays motion, sleekness, athleticism, and elite performance in a very simplified way. That appeals. You don’t have to have one design course under your belt to understand appeal.
Certainly the logo is strong because Nike is a famous brand, but why is Nike so successful? It’s the chicken or the egg scenario. In this case, the swoosh the egg. Or chicken. Whichever came first. The simple mark, or design, played a massive role in propelling the company into billion dollar powerhouse.
Why is Design Important?
Maybe you’re looking for numbers. It’s hard to quantify the value of a brand, but Interbrand tried: According to an interview with Interbrand Chairman, Rita Clifton by Thought Economics,
“…the top 10 global brands (as measured by the Interbrand index) have a combined value of over $432 billion (against their total market capitalisation of $1.7 trillion). That means that 24% of the real economic value of these organisations lies in their brands.”
Twenty-four percent is wrapped up in your brand! The way your target market perceives your brand is a substantial chunk of the value of your entire business. So the value of your company is only partly measured by your assets. Careful thought behind logo design seems quite important now. It’s the difference between customer confusion and customer recognition.
Brand Perception
If you’re looking for a brand that is diligent in its touchpoints, look no further than the two-tailed mermaid.
What brand has penetrated our society so much as to bring a European-style leisure activity to the US, insist we become nearly bilingual upon ordering and arguably add its own name to the American tripod of baseball, mamas and apple pie?
As an industry-transcending brand, Starbucks is a wonderful blueprint to model your own brand strategy.
Reasons to Come to You
Huffington Post writer Stephanie Ciccarelli lists three reasons customers choose a brand.
Trust
Ease-of-Use
Speed
So is your overall branding effort exuding trust, ease-of-use and speed? Does your logo portray that?